138 - REPORT—1858. 
roots which supply that limb, the power of movement will be retained so long as the 
anterior roots are intact; but the power of co-ordinated movement will be altogether 
destroyed. With diminishing sensibility we see diminishing power of co-ordination, 
the movements become less and less orderly ; and with the destruction of sensibility 
the movements cease to have their co-ordinated harmony. Now in the cases I have 
cited it is clear that this power of co-ordinating movements—sometimes very complex 
movements—was nearly, if not quite, perfect in the decapitated animal ; therefore if 
co-ordination implies sensibility, the conclusion seems inevitable that the spinal 
chord is a centre of sensibility. The whole case may be summed up thus :—l1st. 
Positive evidence proves that in decapitated animals the actions are truly sensorial. 
Qnd. Positive evidence, on the other hand, seems to show that in human beings with 
injured spines the actions are not sensorial, but reflex. 3rd. Butas the whole science 
of physiology presupposes that between vertebrate animals there is such a general 
concordance, that whatever is demonstrable of the organs in one animal will be true 
of similar organs in another—and inasmuch as it is barely conceivable that the spinal 
chord of a frog, a pigeon, and a rabbit should have a sensorial function, while that 
of man has none—we must conclude that the seeming contradiction afforded by 
human pathology admits of reconcilement. No fact really invalidates any other fact. 
If the animal is such an organized machine that an external impression will produce 
the same actions as would have been produced by sensation and volition, we have 
absolutely no ground for believing in the sensibility of animals at all, and we may as 
well at once accept the bold hypothesis of Descartes that they are mere automata. 
If the frog is so organized, that when he cannot defend himself in one way, the in- 
ternal mechanism will set going several other ways—if he can perform, unconsciously, 
all those actions which he performs consciously, it is surely superfluous to assign any 
consciousness at all. His organism may be called a self-adjusting mechanism, in 
which consciousness finds no more room than in the mechanism of a watch. 
On the Pressure of the Atmosphere, and its Power in modifying and deter- 
mining Hemorrhagic Disease. By Joun Miruican, M.R.CS.B. 
The chief object of this paper appeared to be to show that hemorrhage was in 
many cases produted by extraordinary atmospheric pressure, numerous cases being 
adduced in which bleeding occurred coincidentally with the fall of the barometer, 
and for which no other cause was discernible. In order to obtain a more complete 
elucidation of the subject, Mr. Milligan recommended the establishment of a system 
of medical meteorology, to which medical men might contribute by constructing 
tables presenting all the meteorological elements involved in or affecting cases 
occurring within their own practice. . oe 19! 
After explaining the nature and kind of the periodic variations of the barometer, 
Mr. Milligan stated that the superficies of a human body of the average size would 
measure nearly 2000 square inches, and consequently sustain a pressure from the 
atmosphere amounting to 30,000 pounds, or nearly 15 tons, and that this weight 
would vary from a ton to a ton and a half, according to the pressure of the atmo- 
sphere, as indicated by the mercurial gauge. It was the peculiar relations that this 
pressure bore to hemorrhagic disease that Mr. Milligan proposed to investigate; and 
from numerous well-authenticated cases it was proved that a great number of attacks 
of epistaxis and hemoptysis occurred simultaneously with a depression of the mer- 
curial column : moreover, that as a general rule hemorrhagic attacks may be anti- 
cipated at the periods that mark the horary oscillations of the barometer, and more 
especially those that are accompanied by a fall of the mercurial column. In support 
of these opinions Mr. Milligan adduced several striking facts, and from a registration 
of 184 cases of various kinds of hemorrhagic disease, the attacks commenced at the 
following hours :—From 1 to 2 a.m., 15 cases; from 3 to 4, 7 cases; from 4 to 5, 
32 cases; from 5 to 6, 43 cases ; from 6 to 7, 70 cases; from 7 to 8, 9 cases; from 
8 to 9,7 cases. Mr. Milligan concluded by calling upon his medical brethren to 
keep records of barometrical measurements and hemorrhagic diseases, as it was only 
by a well-directed and systematic course of inquiry that the true bearings of meteo- 
rological phenomena to mortality and disease could be understood, and the per- 
